Wholesale rice prices going down in Visayas
By Carla Gomez, Jhunnex Napallacan, Joey A. Gabieta
Visayas Bureau
First Posted 20:06:00 04/23/2008
CEBU CITY, Philippines -- Wholesale prices of rice in Cebu, Negros Occidental and Leyte have started to drop as the harvest nears and more imports of the staple cereal arrive in the country.
Marianito Bejemino, National Food Authority (NFA) provincial manager in Negros Occidental, said the wholesale price of commercial rice in the province dropped from P50 to P100 per 50-kilo bag.
He attributed the decline in prices to the increase in the NFA rice stock in the market and the expected increase in supply once the current crop is harvested.
Bejemino said the declining prices of commercial rice would be felt soon in the retail market.
Beginning last week, the NFA beginning doubled its retail supply and has been providing 10 to 12 percent of the rice needs of Negros Occidental, he said. He explained that market forces would guarantee that when wholesale prices go down, retail prices would also go down.
"We expect the drop in retail prices of commercial rice in one to two weeks and are hoping that it will eventually fall to P24 to P26 a kilo," he said.
But members of the clergy said at a church-provincial government committee meeting to address the rice price crisis held at the capitol Tuesday that so far, they had yet to see lower retail prices on the ground.
Fr. Ireneo Gordoncillo said that as far as they knew, the retail prices of commercial rice were still going up.
In Cebu City, however, prices of commercial rice went down by at least P50 to P100 for every 50-kilo bag, said Erwin Goc-ong, vice president of the Grain Retailers Confederation of the Philippines (Grecon) Cebu City North.
A 50-kilo bag of Lion Ivory rice, which was sold at P1,720 last week, has been selling from P1,620 to P1,640, Goc-ong said.
The price of Ganador, which was sold at P1,800 a sack last week, has been selling at P1,750 per sack, a decrease of P1 per kilo, he said.
But Goc-ong said the lower wholesale prices might not have an immediate impact on retail prices since retailers would have to dispose of stocks bought at higher prices.
Goc-ong, who also chairs the Cebu Market Vendors Development Cooperative, added that rice retailers suffered a 30 percent reduction in sales because many of the consumers have been lining up at NFA retail outlets to get cheaper rice.
The prices of commercial rice also dropped in Tacloban City and in most of Leyte and other provinces of Eastern Visayas.
The NFA in Eastern Visayas said the price of well-milled rice ranged from P30 to P34 per kilo as of Wednesday.
NFA-8 economist Belen Barbanida also cited the increased supply from locally harvested palay as having influenced the selling price of rice.
"It's harvest season now so with so much supply now, we expect the price to go down," Barbanida said.
At the height of the rice crisis, the prices of commercially milled rice ranged from P30 to P40 per kilo, depending on the variety.
However, she noted that the prices of well-milled rice would no longer return to their "prior [to] crisis level."
"The buying price of palay has increased as well as [the cost of] fertilizers," Barbanida said.
Before the rice crisis, a kilo of well-milled rice could be bought from as low as P20 to as high as P29.
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